CHAPTER ONE OUTLINE



Chapter One Outline

What is development? describes all the physical and psychological changes that an individual undergoes in a lifetime.

Developmental psychology is the scientific discipline that attempts to describe and explain these changes by verifiable fact-finding procedures.

Theory.: to organize facts about a particular subject of study, guide further research., and explain research findings in an orderly and predictable fashion.

Formulate social policies that affect children and their development. Specific theories that have been developed to study child psychology typically center around several basic themes.

Five major themes in developmental psychology

How do nature and nurture interact in development? concerns whether behavior is the result of innate, genetic influences (nature) or the environmental stimulation to which each individual is exposed (nurture).

How does the sociocultural context influence development? Human development occurs within a larger social group. The influences of the values and resources of that social group on development

Is development continuous or discontinuous? how to explain the dramatic changes that are observed in children as they develop.

How do the various domains of development interact? Advances in physical development, for example, can lead to changes in social and cognitive development. To explain the behavior of the whole child, theories of development must explain how each domain contributes to the others during the developmental process.

What factors promote risk or resilience in development? Human development may proceed along different paths at different rates from individual to individual. Children are exposed to various kinds and levels of benefits and risks. Risk may be a consequence of genetic or biological complications as well as environmental influence

Resilient children are those who seem able to most effectively resist the negative consequences of risk. Personality traits and close family and group interactions are some of the factors that make children resilient.

The concepts of risk and resilience have strong implications for interventions and are of special interest to professionals involved in education, clinical issues, and other applied fields.

The scientific study of the child: historical perspectives Attitudes toward children have shifted during last century-- has created an emphasis on children as the objects of scientific study.

The concept of childhood

Children of the Middle Ages in Europe, although recognized as different and possessing special needs, were incorporated into the adult world as soon as they were physically able to contribute to the economy.

John Locke: newborn’s mind is a tabula rasa, or “blank slate,”

Jean Jacques Rousseau : child as a “noble savage”

The origins of developmental psychology Charles Darwin and Wilhelm Preyer studied their children to support the emerging views about the evolution of human beings. Their baby biographies stimulated interest in the systematic study of the child.

G. Stanley Hall considered founder of developmental psychology---use of the questionnaire method to systematically collect data on large groups of children.

Alfred Binet developed the first intelligence assessment scale; and important study of individual differences.

James Mark Baldwin contributed important theoretical ideas to developmental psychology, including development as a mutual dynamic between the child and others.

Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual theory of development proposed that many aspects of personality originate in an early and broad form of childhood sexuality.

Growth of developmental psychology in the twentieth century first 40 years of the twentieth century, developmental psychologists primarily gathered descriptive information on children. Today research increasingly seeks to identify the causes of development.

Learning theory approaches Learning is the relatively permanent change in behavior that results from experience.

John Watson (extreme form of learning theory)--- all behavior can be explained by the experiences a person encounters.

Behavior analysis--a theoretical concept that relies on the principles of classical and operant conditioning to explain most aspects of development.

Social learning theory: stresses importance of observational learning, the acquisition of behaviors from watching and listening to others. Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory, expanded social learning theory to include cognitive processes--- observation and imitation of a model allows new skills to be acquired quickly and efficiently in a social context.

Learning theory and themes in development: Behavior analysis emphasizes role of the external environment in rewarding or punishing behavior.

Social learning theories rely on roles of biology and other internal factors that interact with experience to affect development.

Behaviorists theorize that the principles of learning are universal and therefore less subject to sociocultural differences.

Social learning theory: importance of learning in a social context--- emphasizes importance of cultural differences for learning.

Behavior analysis: child does not play an active role in development and that development is continuous. Individual differences are the result of different learning experiences.

Cognitive-developmental approaches ---stress the emergence of psychological structures, which are organized ways of thinking that affect the way the child interprets experience.

Jean Piaget best-known cognitive-developmental theorist. emphasizes that development is action-oriented and that mental structures become qualitatively reorganized at different stages of development.

Piaget’s theory of how children acquire knowledge--focuses on two basic processes: adaptation, the tendency to adjust to the conditions of the environment, and

organization, the tendency for knowledge structures to become more systematic and coherent.

scheme, a coordinated and systematic way of acting on and reasoning about the world. processes that change schemes with development: assimilation and accommodation.

Piaget proposed four stages of intellectual development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete, and formal.

Piaget’s theory and themes in development influenced by biological theories and emphasized process of maturation, the gradual unfolding over time of genetic programs for development.

minimized the influence of sociocultural differences in the development of knowledge. According to Piaget, the child is very much an active participant in his or her own cognitive development. Knowledge is constructed.

children proceed through a series of qualitatively distinct stages of development that represent major reorganizations in the way they think.

Information-processing approaches-- primary assumption of most information-processing models is that human mind has limited capacity for processing information. With development, changes in capacities, skills, and strategies help the child process information more effectively.

Information-processing approaches and themes in development-few basic capacities are presumed to be present at birth. The sociocultural context has been given little attention. Information-processing approaches accept that the child is an active processor of information; developmental changes continuous and quantitative.

Erikson’s psychosocial model of development deal with emotional and personality development. emphasis on societal and cultural influences on development.

Eight stages in psychosocial development, common theme is the individual’s search for identity, the acceptance of one’s self and society.

Psychosocial theory and themes in development Freud stressed the biological component of the development ; Erikson stresses that child is more active in seeking identity within the society. Erikson views development as a series of stages, with behavior at one stage laying the foundation for behavior at the next stage. Individual differences are the product of the degree of success in negotiating each stage of development.

Contextual approaches Children develop within a complex set of hierarchical contexts—the family, the community, the political system, and the culture. Contextual models address the broad range of biological, physical, and sociocultural settings that influence development.

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory focuses on the broad range of situations that children encounter and are influenced by during their development. Several levels of context—the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem—affect the individual. These contexts are, in turn, influenced by the chronosystem, Bronfenbrenner’s term for the time-linked events that affect development.

Vygotsky’s sociohistorical theory emphasizes unique cultural and social contexts within which every child develops. As children grow and participate in their own cultures, they acquire the language, practices, and ways of thinking specific to those cultures.

language is a particularly important cultural tool because it can influence the child’s thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Both ecological systems and sociohistorical theory view development as a dynamic, continual process that involves reciprocal exchanges at many different levels of the environment. Much of development is a consequence of the active role that the child plays in creating the environment within which she or he develops.

Dynamic systems theory --perspective that development is often the outcome of interactions occurring at multiple levels of behavior. These interactions can produce unexpected and novel outcomes in behavior and reorganization that are more adaptive for the individual.

Ethology is the discipline concerned with how adaptive behaviors have evolved and how they function to help a species survive.

Ethologists: certain kinds of learning may occur only during sensitive, or critical, periods in development. Imprinting-- exhibited in some species of newly born birds and some other animals.

species-specific behaviors of newborns, such as crying and smiling, may form basis for attachment

Themes in development-- ethological theories stress biological contributions, contextual theories emphasize nurture in the developmental process. Most contextual theories are concerned with sociocultural influences on development; ethological theory assumed to apply to all cultures.

Contextual models--child an active participant in the environment; relationship assumed to be bidirectional, each influencing the other. Contextual models view development as a gradual and continuous process without reference to any major qualitative changes that occur with age.

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